


mirror my malady

by goddesspharo



Category: Sicario (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddesspharo/pseuds/goddesspharo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She couldn't trick herself into ever imagining him as a man with something to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mirror my malady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultron/gifts).



Later, much later, when it doesn't matter and it still matters all too much, Kate realizes that the thing about concessions is that you can never make just one. Perhaps that slippery slope is what people like Matt count on. It's remarkably easy to glide across the black ice between being able to look at yourself in the mirror and living in the shadows so that you needn't bother. In some ways, it's enviable how everything is a minor speed bump to Matt in his pursuit of that brand of justice that makes him as dangerous as the other guy.

 

( _You will not survive here. You are not a wolf._

 

Kate's throat catches.)

 

"Congrats on the promotion," Matt says now with that permanent used car salesman grin plastered on his smug face as he sits across from her in a shitty Phoenix bar off the beaten path. He seems disappointed that she isn't more surprised to see him here, but she spotted his tail two days ago. Matt helps himself to stale peanuts and motions for the waitress to bring them another round. "Gotta say, as far as going away parties go, this is pretty bleak."

 

She doesn't offer up that he is the only one who knows she's leaving. Not only does he possess an over-inflated sense of importance already, but Kate has no doubt that he's got her phones tapped and already knows.

 

"I should've told you to fuck off that day in the conference room," Kate wistfully mentions instead.

 

"That's no way to thank the guy who recommended you for a promotion," he tsks. Kate accepted the job in New York before she knew it was repayment for her silence, but by then it was too late. She had already packed her bags, booked her flight, and cut all the tethers that were keeping her here. "You did a good thing, Kate."

 

"I saved you."

 

"A _great_ thing then."

 

Before she can argue his word choice, a waitress who looks like she's twenty-five going on forty comes by with their drinks and frowns when she sees the small mountain of soggy paper bits that Kate has made with the peeled off label from her lukewarm bottle of beer. Matt shrugs, unapologetic as always, before tipping an imaginary hat at the woman as she moves on to a table of increasingly drunk men who are sure to grope her ass after a few more shots. Once she has disappeared from his line of vision, Matt turns back to Kate and clinks the neck of his bottle with hers.

 

" _Mazel tov_. Here's to—"

 

"Ruining lives?"

 

"You signed a piece of paper."

 

"You don't know what that cost me," she hisses, knuckles going white from how hard she presses her nails into her palm. When Kate closes her eyes, she can see Reggie's disappointment during the press conference after about trusting the rules of law to guide them.

 

"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Kate," Matt says with a laugh as if the failure of her moral fortitude is nothing more than a punchline to be dismissed at the watercooler. "Jesus, this is a drag. We need nachos. Can't have a party without nachos."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When she comes back, everything is split along a fault line that separates time into Before Mexico and After Mexico. Before Mexico Kate was idealistic and stupid but she could wake up in the morning and know that she was doing everything for the right reasons. The Kate After Mexico is a hollowed out boat without an oar that Reggie tries desperately to pull back to shore. He drags her out of bars and tucks her into bed and watches her from an armchair to make sure she doesn't aspirate in her sleep.

 

Reggie is in love with her in a way that hurts more than her failed marriage, but it isn't until after (Mexico) (the gun) (the papers) (the twinge in her hand where Alejandro tried to offer comfort) that she does anything about it. Kate shows up at his apartment more sober than she has been in the past week and kisses him, a desperate attempt to feel something other than this incredible loneliness in her bones. She wants to feel like the person he thinks she is – someone _good_ – but when he pushes her away and asks if she's okay, Kate feels the bile rising up from her throat because she will never be that woman again.

 

"Jennings didn't cover up Mexico."

 

"What are you talking about, Kate?" he asks, rubbing his eyes wearily. "I was at the meeting where he congratulated Graver for getting it done by the book."

 

"That was me. I signed off on it."

 

"Why would you do that?" She has severed the rope tying them together and now he doesn't have to fall with her. He can fall out of love with her and this can be it. "Why are you telling me this?"

 

"You think I'm better than them, but I'm not. I see it now – old boss, new boss: it's all the same boss."

 

"You're _not,_ " he insists, the betrayal leeching into his voice.

 

Kate feels an unbelievable sense of lightness when Reggie looks at her like she's a stranger. For the first time, her eyes are open and maybe she hates him a little for making her see Matt's side – there is no place for Reggie's unwavering faith in humanity in their line of work.

 

"I have to go, Reg," she says before turning back towards her car. Reggie calls out her name and all she wants to do is scream, _I didn't owe it to you to be a good person._

 

Instead, Kate bites her lip until she tastes metal and doesn't look back.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

New York is her form of rebellion, the compromise Kate struck to be able to live with herself. It's not a small town, but there is order in its frenetic energy. In New York, no one cares about drug raids or the Mexican cartel. There is no dust to kick up or bodies to pull out of walls. They offer her an office with a view of the skyline that Kate accepts while ignoring her fear of heights.

 

Kate drinks too many deceptively small bottles of vodka on the flight to New York and disembarks with the worst hangover of her life. There is a distinct moment between stepping out of the airport and waiting for the cabbie to get her door unlocked when Kate thinks that she sees him in the crowd. A shiver goes through her from where he pressed the cold steel of his gun against her chin and Kate feels paralyzed, the chaos of people bustling in and out of JFK giving way to that terrible vivid nightmare of being trapped in a tunnel with Alejandro popping two shots into her chest again. He knew she was wearing a vest, but she could see in his eyes that it was an afterthought.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Sometimes when it is cool and there is a hint of rain in the skies, Kate can feel the phantom bruises around her neck burn. There is nothing left to see, but Kate remembers everything—

 

The air gets thinner as Kate gasps to pull in even the smallest of breaths while struggling to keep her vision clear. It feels like her lungs are filling up with smoke while she drowns in molten lava and just when she she starts to feel the darkness creeping in from her peripheral vision, there is a reprieve and the pain at her throat lets up. Alejandro stands above her with his hand extended, a savior in the devil's clothing. By reaching for it, she is locked into this dance, forever in his debt.

 

—and wonders what she would have seen if he had been a few seconds too late.

 

( _You remind me of someone very special to me_ , he said afterwards and Kate tried to guess what he was like when his hands were soft and there wasn't blood seeping into the cracks, but she couldn't trick herself into ever imagining him as a man with something to lose.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Even in New York, Kate has nightmares of waking up to find him in her apartment. Her fingers scramble for her sidearm in the middle of the night, body drenched in sweat as she waits for the panic that exists in those first few moments between sleep and wakefulness to subside. She pops Xanax and goes to Bikram Yoga and tries to drink herself to the point of unconsciousness but Kate still has to look into every corner and map out all the exits when she enters a room. At work, she is just social enough not to raise flags, but her co-workers soon grow tired of prying more than monosyllabic answers out of her and stop inviting her to happy hour.

 

During the seven months she spends in her Manhattan apartment, Kate does not hang up a single picture or piece of artwork. Half of her stuff is still in boxes while the other half is haphazardly strewn around in a close approximation of where they would be if she took the time to decorate. She only returns her messages when she knows her mother won't be around to answer the call. Kate amasses a staggering collection of take out menus and her speed dial is populated with a wide variety of phone numbers for Chinese food places.

 

When she comes home one night with a brown bag full of red wine and vodka, the only thing that looks at home in her apartment is the one thing that doesn't belong.

 

"Did you break in?" Kate asks while she pours herself a glass at the breakfast bar, not even remotely alarmed to find Matt Graver lounging on her couch with his flip-flop clad feet up on her coffee table as he flips through channels. He looks as smarmy as he always does. The only indication that any time has passed is that he has a little more grey at his temples now and a new scar above his right eye where Kate desperately hopes someone punched him.

 

"I made creative use of an unlicensed key of sorts," Matt says, smacking his gum proudly. "I'll take a beer if you've got one."

 

"I don't," Kate lies. "There's the door. Goodbye."

 

"I'm getting the old band back together for a Juárez reunion tour," he announces, undeterred by her lack of hospitality. Kate always knew this moment would come eventually, but she thought she would at least get twelve months before Matt came knocking on her door.

 

"Not interested."

 

"Your friend Archie—"

 

"Reggie."

 

"That kid is chomping at the bit to make a difference. Thing is I don't trust him," Matt admits with a shrug. "Three divorces will breed a distaste of lawyers in a person."

 

"And you trust _me_?" Kate scoffs. "Whatever you want, I can't give it to you. I am not in that business anymore."

 

"You're more of a bureaucrat now, right? Pity," he says, shaking his head. "Still, I figured I'd give you a chance to finish this thing."

 

"By killing more innocent people? This thing will never be done."

 

Matt's laugh echoes off her empty walls until it takes on a cartoonish nature. "We both know that there are no innocent people, Kate. There's just bad and worse."

 

"Which are you?"

 

"That's a matter of perspective."

 

Kate hates herself for asking if Matt made this same pitch to his gun for hire. She tries to get her voice to sound nonchalant, but Kate can't even bring herself to stay Alejandro's name. She shouldn't care – she doesn't, she doesn't, _she doesn't –_ but there is a sick feeling in her stomach that makes her think Matt wouldn't be here if Alejandro wasn't on board already.

 

"Do I detect a little crush, Agent Macer?" Matt asks with a wink. He tilts his head like it'll give him a better look into her soul. When Kate flips him the bird, Matt claps his hand down on the counter like a down-on-his-luck gambler with a winning hand. It's almost disturbing to see him so uncharacteristically enthusiastic about reuniting her with the man who threatened to kill her. "You know, playing matchmaker has always been on my bucket list…"

 

If she didn't regret asking him before, Kate immensely regrets it now. With a single motion, she reaches for her gun and points it between Matt's eyes. "Get out of my house."

 

"Fair enough," he says, raising his hands in surrender. "But to answer your question, Alejandro will be joining us. He's back at the hotel. Not quite housebroken, you understand."

 

It feels like someone has released all the air from the room when Kate lowers her weapon to grip onto the counter edge with one hand so her legs won't falter. Thousands of scenarios have played out in her head over the past few months but in all of them she had a sixth sense that Alejandro was in town biding his time until he preyed on her like a feral animal and she answered in kind with a bullet to his chest. Never did she think that she wouldn't be able to sense it like a change in the barometric pressure before a storm.

 

Matt slides a piece of paper with a hastily scribbled flight number towards her. "Wheels up in twenty six hours, Kate. Tick tock."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

It is almost like déjà vu when Kate takes a seat across from Alejandro on the plane. Within minutes of lifting off, Matt is passed out on the couch and the only sound is his occasional snoring.

 

"Hello Kate," Alejandro finally says with a nod. "I wasn't sure you would be joining us. Graver said you inquired about me."

 

"I was hoping you had died," she says meanly. "But like all roaches, here you are. Looks like you failed the first time if we have to go back again."

 

"A new draft always requires revisions," he answers with a shrug. "Certainly it is more meaningful work than pushing papers in the city."

 

"Meaningful like shooting women and children?"

 

"Omelettes and eggs, no?"

 

Kate shakes her head in disgust before spitting out, "I bet your family would be proud."

 

Alejandro's eyes flash with something like anger when he leans forward towards her. Kate holds her ground, her head held up in defiance while she has one hand resting at the small of her back on the gun tucked into her waistband. She tells herself that this time she won't hesitate.

 

Alejandro stares at her for a moment before chuckling. "I will not hurt you."

 

"Forgive me if I don't believe that," she says with her hand still poised to shoot. "The last time I saw you, you had a gun pointed at my face."

 

"We both did what we had to do," Alejandro insists. Kate wonders if he thought what he was offering her was absolution – she compromised her integrity only in the face of mortal death. Surely, no one could criticize her choices when placed in that position. "You should not blame yourself, Kate."

 

_I blame you_ , she wants to reply but even that is not true.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

It turns out loyalties are not so easily brokered through intimidation in Juárez. There is another shootout in the tunnels, but this time it is Kate on the other side when Alarcón's oldest son holds Alejandro at knifepoint. She can see the tick of the hitman's jugular where the blade is pressed, a rivulet of blood trailing down the corded muscle of his neck.

 

"You are in the service of liars and this man is a monster," Alarcón's son says as he walks backwards to the stolen police car with the hitman. "Do not follow me. I will slit his throat before you can shoot."

 

The cartel isn't much for souvenirs. If she lets them go, Kate can go home to New York tomorrow comfortable with the knowledge that she can stop having to look behind her shoulder. Perhaps this is what Alejandro deserves – an eye for an eye. There is no scarcity of men that Graver can find with a thirst for vengeance in Juárez, but there is something about the red at Alejandro's neck that keeps her gun trained on them.

 

Kate waits until the hand holding the knife eases off. The man starts to move it towards Alejandro's right flank so he can push his head down and into the backseat of the car. Kate takes her chance in that moment, firing off one shot to hit Alejandro square in the chest. The force of all of Alejandro's weight against him catches Alarcón's son off guard just long enough for Kate to shoot the knife out of his hand. He start to grab for the spare pistol in his shoe when Kate aims for his heart and squeezes the trigger one last time. He crumples to the ground next to Alejandro.

 

"A wolf in sheep's clothing," Alejandro wheezes as he pulls himself to a seated position against the back tires of the car.

 

"No," Kate corrects, dropping the empty gun on the ground. "Just a wolf."

 

 

 

 


End file.
